In light of recent tragic shootings at schools, public safety officials have been re-evaluating their lockdown protocols and schools have been advised, if not legally mandated already, to keep doors locked during instructional times and when doors are not actively used. However, practically speaking, to lock and unlock doors a handful of times each day is inefficient and burdensome for teachers.
In an active shooter situation, doors at schools need to be locked in no more than 5 seconds. Schools also need gadgets that can be retrofitted with existing doors so that doors are not required to be replaced for financial and practical reasons. Furthermore, public schools, for example, most likely cannot afford any of the high-tech gadgets that assist with locking and unlocking doors that are available today.
Typically, doors are locked at the handle or knob and require a physical turning of a key to change between a locked and unlocked configuration. Thus, an efficient method of providing a safe environment would be to keep the door itself locked while providing another simple manual option for keeping the door open.
Further, given that the average person has many keys on a keychain, it may take a significant amount of time to manually lock or unlock a door. Thus, there are many other circumstances when a locked door needs to be held open but preferably not by a doorstopper that could unintentionally be pushed aside and result in an accidental lockout.
Therefore, there has been a growing need, inside and outside the classroom, for a device that provides a simple foolproof anti-locking functionality for doors that does not require one to change a locked configuration of the door itself.